Our 7th Girl Geek Dinner was taken in the reign by the Queen of Sciences – Mathematics. As all participants could discover themselves during that evening, Mathematics is not an old rigid woman talking in Greek symbols, pressing her complicated formulas wherever she can and using theorems as her strongest argument. It turned out, she can be like a girl next door, a friend always happy to share tips with you on the complex issue of relationships. This friendly image of Maths was thanks to Ionica Smeets, the co-author of http://www.wiskundemeisjes.nl/.
Ionica made all the intricacies of maths, irrespectively of whether she was talking about game theory, optimization or differential equations, seem really simple. First, she explained how game theory and Nash equilibrium can be used to find the best strategy for a group of friends that want to hit on some girls in a bar. In brief, it would be unwise of them, if they all try to pick up the prettiest one. She would become stuck-up and none of the guys would have any success with her. What’s worse, her girl friends would hate to be the second-choice; the guys would leave the bar alone. Solution: leave the prettiest girl alone, and let each of the guys hit on one of her girl friends. This way, each of the man has a chance of getting a girl’s number. What happens with the prettiest girl then? Well, George Clooney always gets the prettiest one, doesn’t he? 😉
If you are wondering whether your partner is the right one, mathematics can also be handy. As Ionica showed us, a little bit of probability calculus and optimization can help you estimate the number of the partners you should meet before you decide on settling down knowing that there are high chances that the chosen one is appropriate for you. The two most important slides to remember are: (1) Try twelve and keep the first one who is better than all the previous ones, (2) This strategy yields a 75% probability of a good partner.
With little help of mathematics it can also be modeled how strong a relationship is and who will be the first to break it up. As Ionica mentioned, John Gottman Institute created even a successful business around equation of marital interactions, that she presented during her talk. It looked like maths can be applied to almost any aspect of our romantic sphere of life and the dinner attendees were eager to hear more on the topic. So Ionica was forced to tell us about the peculiar behaviour of mating spiders. Apparently, male spiders of a particular species have found a strategy of giving presents that appeal to a female spider only if she likes the giver as well as the present. Sounds like a graph theory again? You’re correct.
It was a really interesting evening and we were very happy to have Ionica as our speaker of the evening. Ionica’s slides can be found here (as PPT) and here (as PDF).
Photos were taken by Arthur de Smidt. Post written by Ania Chmielowiec.